CHAP. IV.j PREPARING FOR A MEDICAL DEGEEE.

There is another confession in a later letter to his uncle, 1752.
which touches him in a nearer point, and suggests perhaps ^-24-
more than it reveals. It would seem as though, to eke out
Ms resources, he had, for some part of his time, accepted
employment in a great man's house: probably as tutor.
"I have spent," he says, "more than a fortnight every
" second day at the Duke of Hamilton's ; but it seems they
"like me more as a jester than as a companion; so I
" disdained so servile an employment." To those with
whom, on equal terms, he could be both jester and com-
panion, Bryanton was charged with every kind of remem-
brance. " You cannot send me much news from Ballymahon,
"but such as it is, send it all; everything you send will be
" agreeable to me. Has George Con way put up a sign yet ?
" or John Bincly left off drinking drams ? or Tom Allen
"got a new wig?" To the remarkably pleasant and
whimsical satire of the Scotch he at the same time wrote
to Bryanton, I need scarcely have referred, because in all
the editions of his works, except the Scotch, it is commonly
printed: but on the whole I think it best to include these
various letters in an appendix without pledging myself to any
special belief in the accuracy of all their statements. As
a generally humorous picture drawn from various sources,
rather than a strictly veracious record of his own experience,
it will perhaps be safest to regard them; but this remark
applies less strongly to those two of the three letters to his
uncle Contarme, the earliest in date and least important in
contents, which Mr. Prior discovered.

In the first, dated May 17 63* and in which he alludes 1753.
to a description of himself by his uncle, as " the philosopher -3Bt. 25

done. See and compare Prior, i. 139—145. The reader will find the letter in
the Appendix (C) to this volume. * Appendix (C) to this volume.ly exempt."